Given the ever-increasing cost of energy, power conservation has become a prime consideration for products and services. This is especially true for data center management, where the cost of power can consume a large portion of a budget and profits. In a data center, power is not only needed to run computer systems, but is also needed to run crucial ancillary systems, such as cooling systems.
In addition to conserving power and minimizing other costs, data centers typically must be responsive to customers requirements for running their applications. In many instances, customers, through a contractual arrangement, employ a data center to run their software applications. The contractual arrangement specifies service level agreements (SLAs), whereby customers specify service levels that must be met when running their applications. Thus, in addition to minimizing costs, data centers must ensure SLAs are satisfied.
Some data center management solutions may monitor utilization of central processing units (CPUs) to minimize SLA violations. For example, if utilization of a CPU hosting a customer's application exceeds a threshold, then the application may be moved to a second, less-loaded CPU. This approach may initially prevent SLA violations. However, the utilization of the second CPU may increase beyond the threshold in a relatively short period of time, and as a result, the application is continuously moved to different CPUs. This not only reduces stability of the system, but also may result in increased power consumption, and, as a result, in increased data center management costs.